The present invention relates to timer mechanisms for use in conjunction with the taking of medications and, more particularly, to automatic devices which facilitate the taking of medications at the proper time intervals.
Most medications are most effective when received by the body over a period of time. Preferably, such medications should be administered as tiny doses administered with great frequency. Ideally, the administration should be continuous. This is indeed accomplished with intravenous medication which is common in hospitals. Recently there have developments in the area of skin patches which are worn by the user and which continuously release medication through the skin over a period of hours or days. Related developments have been in the area of time-release capsules which are designed to release the medication into the stomach over a period of time following swallowing.
For most purposes, however, it is of ten adequate to approximate continuous administration of medications by the periodic swallowing of pills, whether time-released or not. Thus, most medication comes with instructions to swallow one pill every six hours, or two pills every three hours, etc.
The difficulty with such periodic administration of medications is that the patient, or the one administering the medication to the patient, often errs in the administration. It is quite common for patients to forget to take a pill or to forget that they recently took a pill and take an additional pill. Both situations mitigate against the effective administration of the medication and could, in some instances, have very harmful results. The problem is aggravated by the fact that, on the average, the population taking medication is older and sicker than the population at large. This makes it even more likely that deviations will occur from the prescribed medication administration regiment.
Because the problem is widely recognized, a large number of solutions have been offered. The solutions to date each suffer from one or more of several disadvantages. In many cases a device is proposed includes compartments for the pills and which features one or more timer mechanisms. These devices are usually bulky and in many cases require the transfer of the pills from their original container to the device. More importantly, these devices are complicated which makes them expensive and renders them difficult to set up and use, especially by elderly people.
Devices have been developed which can be attached to or incorporated into conventional medicine bottles. Examples of these include the devices disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,361,408, 4,367,955 and 4,419,016. These devices continue to suffer from the disadvantage of being relatively cumbersome and expensive.
There is a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, an inexpensive and highly simple device which will make it alert a patient when it is time to take a medication. It would be further highly advantageous if this device could part of the original packaging of the medicine and, like the packaging, be disposable.